Chapter 195: The man you met.

Liam’s fingers tightened in Arik’s shirt despite himself.

It was not forgiveness, but rather instinct reaching for its mate.

Love, even wounded, had muscle memory.

Arik felt it and nearly broke harder.

"You think I want to go because Ravenwood has better curtains?" Liam asked, voice shaking against his collar.

"No."

"You think I do not know Felix is dangerous? You think I don’t know Cain is missing?"

"No."

"Then WHY," Liam said, trying to pull back enough to look at him, but Arik’s arms tightened before he could stop himself. Liam’s eyes flashed. "Arik."

Arik forced his arms to loosen.

It cost him more than killing would have.

Liam looked up at him, furious and hurt and too pale. "Why are you making this about danger when you know that is not the real problem?"

Because danger was easier.

Because Felix could be hunted, Cain could be found, Ray could be broken open for names, and George’s rot could be burned out line by line, but Liam looking at him as if Arik had made him small in his own bond was something no battlefield had taught him to survive.

Arik’s eyes closed.

"Because I wanted you for myself."

Liam stopped moving.

The room went silent.

Arik opened his eyes, and there was no prince left in his face.

Only the truth, ugly and late.

"I wanted you to choose ME," Arik said. "Not Goliath. Not Nuria. Not the soul that crawled out of history with blood on its hands and an empire behind it. Not the poison Felix made into a shrine. Not the thing everyone else looked for when they looked at me."

His voice dropped.

"I wanted you to choose Arik Lyon. Crown Prince of Agaron. Damian and Gabriel’s son. The man you met. The man who came to your lab and irritated you. The man you marked. The man whose name you said without history attached to it."

Liam’s anger flickered, shaken by the nakedness of the confession.

Arik swallowed. "I thought if I kept him buried long enough, he would not matter. I thought if I controlled it, if I separated myself from him, then when you chose me, it would be clean. Mine ."

A bitter laugh escaped Liam.

It sounded like pain wearing humor badly.

Arik’s hands stilled against his back.

Liam looked at him as if he could not believe him, except he did. That was the terrible thing. He understood. And because he understood, it hurt worse.

"You are an idiot," Liam whispered.

Arik’s mouth tightened. "Yes."

"No, not the polite kind." Liam pushed at his chest, and this time Arik let him put enough space between them to breathe. Liam’s crimson eyes burned. "A spectacular idiot. A historically documented idiot. The kind of idiot future engineers will use as a cautionary diagram."

Despite everything, something in Arik’s chest moved.

"Liam—"

"You were fighting your yesterday’s version."

Arik went still.

Liam’s voice trembled, but not from weakness alone. There was anger in it, raw and bright, that came only when love had been bruised badly enough to bleed.

"You were looking at Goliath as if he was some stranger standing between us," Liam said, fingers still fisted in Arik’s shirt because his body, treacherous and bonded and terrified, refused to let go even while his heart wanted to step back. "But he was not standing between us. You put him there."

Arik’s jaw tightened.

Liam laughed once, low and bitter. "Do you understand that? Felix did not do that part. Neither George nor Ray did it. You did."

The words struck with more precision than any blade.

Arik accepted them without flinching, but Liam felt the shudder that went through him, small and buried beneath centuries of discipline. It should not have mattered. Liam should not have cared that Arik was hurting too.

He did.

That made him angrier.

"You let me stand there, in that room, with Felix and that damned portrait, and find out from him." Liam swallowed hard, crimson eyes shining too sharply. "From Felix, Arik. From the man who threatened my mother, my aunt, my people, my lab, and my home. From the man who looked at me like I was a tool he had finally gotten bored enough to pick up."

Arik’s hand flexed at his side, but he did not reach again.

"I know."

"No," Liam snapped. "Do not do that."

Arik’s eyes lifted.

"Do not say ’I know’ like it fixes the part where you decided what I was allowed to know about my own mate."

Silence fell so heavily that even the ether lamps seemed quieter.

Liam’s breathing shook. He hated that. He hated that Arik could see him like this, pale and furious and still leaning too much into the warmth of him because the bond had been terrified for hours and had not yet realized safety could also hurt.

"You wanted me to choose you?" Liam asked. "Fine. I did. I chose you when you were insufferable in my lab. I chose you when you touched my work like you had the right to understand it. I chose you when you looked at me like I was not decorative, not convenient, not a Canmore piece on a board. I chose you before I knew about Goliath. I chose you without the crown and without the old name and without that monstrous portrait watching over me."

His voice broke.

"And then you made that choice smaller by hiding the truth beneath it."

Arik looked as if he had been gutted.

Good, Liam thought viciously, and then hated himself for it because the bond twisted at Arik’s pain as if trying to drag them both into the same wound.

"I did not want to contaminate it," Arik said, and the words came out rough, stripped of polish. "Your choice. I did not want it touched by fear, prophecy, old worship, old hatred, or Felix’s madness. I told myself I was protecting the part of us that was new."

"You were protecting yourself."

Arik let his arms fall by Liam’s side. "Of course I was protecting myself, Eshara."

Liam’s heart jumped at the pet name.

"Who wants to know all of this about me?" Arik asked, his eyes filled with pain. "I was afraid that you wouldn’t want the bond, that maybe the moment you found out you would break it." Arik took a shaky breath. "You said so. You said that if not for the bond being complete, you would have ended it."

Liam looked at Arik, and yes, he said those words, but would he really do it?

"My soul is incomplete, my eshara." Arik’s eyes were so gentle and filled with devotion that Liam almost reached to comfort him. "Our bond is incomplete... Now can you see why I’m so afraid of you?"

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